Friday, 1 August 2008

FOC08 week 1

Well, this is the first time I have ever written a blog in my life, and it feels sort of strange..:) Just a week ago I heard about this course, and decided to give it try. It is not my first online course, however, it is the first international course I participate in. Why have I decided to take it? E-learning appeared in my life about 4 years ago, and has been present ever after. In the meantime, I also started my adventure with sociology - finished MA in Society and Culture with Lancaster, and about two years later decided to do a PhD in Sociology on online communities. My project is at a very initial stage, and I hope that the course would help me to get it further on. Apart from that, my hobby-horse is EFL methodology, especially managing and delivering online courses, motivation, learning styles, and so on. I see a reflection of that in Weeks 4 and 5. Also the course is going to look at Second Life, which is still a place too virtual for me. Although, I attended a conference there a few months ago :) All in all, every week brings up an issue, which is strictly related to both my professional and personal interests. And, from the discussions taking place so far, I can see lots of experienced and professional people taking part in the course, which motivates me even more. In terms of questions an concerns...Hmmm,I missed the first meeting, as I checked what is going on too late, and was then looking forward to hearing the recording. I spent the next two days feeling completely lost - more than 20 messages arriving on my e-mail over night really put me off for some time. However, yesterday I just decided to spend some time on reading, and it turned out that the information overflow is manageable. Still a question remains: if I send an unsubscribe-from-this-group e-mail, would that mean that I have opted out of the course? On my gmail account I receive daily summary of what happened on the forums, which is pretty neat and enough. However, on the e-mail I posted on the forum I receive each single post. How to cancel that without unenrolling myself from the course?:)

4 comments:

We use 'blogs' here for a linguistic course: students post on their fragments of analysis. They are not true blogs as they are inside the firewall . . but it's a start. They dynamic is definitely different to threaded discussions.

As to the information overload problem: I use the delete button a lot. If you get the daily digests, you are still a member of the list. If you are still in the course if you desubscribe altogether is a Leigh question - for the list maybe. I know what I think he will say. -

Hi Derek,Well, strange included all: starting from being insecure through feeling good and ending up with having fun writing my thoughts in the public ether. :)I think I have managed to change the settings, and now there is neither log in nor word verification. :)

I think its a good idea to keep word verification Maria. It stops the spam at least and is not too hard for us wanting to drop a comment. I trust you have worked out how to manage your settings in the email forum? Now that we are up and running with blogs, it is less important to follow the email forum. Some people prefer to communicate through email forums though, other prefer blogs, and others prefer the other Internet platforms we will be testing out. What you decide to use primarily is up to you and you shouldn't feel like you are missing out by choosing one over the other. It is up to you to feel connected, and there are many many more ways of staying connected than through the email forum. Make contact with individuals for a start. Strengthen those individual connections, perhaps by commenting on people's blogs or direct email. Network yourself. Once your connection is established, you won't miss a beat :) Oh, you should be subcribed to the course blog too :)